


as goodbye goes, this isn't a very long one

by apraxial



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, but the character death hasn't happened, gratuitous impressionist references
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 14:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1513736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apraxial/pseuds/apraxial
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're on a train, and some of them aren't going to come out alive, and maybe it's time for Arthur to think about what he regrets.</p><p>From this Inception kink meme <a href="http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/20092.html?thread=50147964#t50147964">prompt</a>: I want to see goodbye. Not "See you in a few weeks" goodbye. But instead "We'll probably never see each other again because one or both of us will probably be dead by tomorrow." And there's people all around, so they don't even have the luxury of privacy. And as horrible and unfair as the situation is, they're both mostly resigned to it. Mostly. But despite that tiny bit of hope, they still take the time to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	as goodbye goes, this isn't a very long one

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this April 13, 2012, apparently, which is two years ago. Just when I finished my Impressionist unit in French, which is clearly obvious. And apparently Inception came out four years ago, which I DON'T BELIEVE. Because clearly that's a lie.
> 
>  
> 
> [Original here.](http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/20092.html?thread=50220924#t50220924)

The silence is terrible, even as they speak. It is thick and heavy and smothering. It creeps into their lungs like pneumatic fluid. Each and every one of them wishes desperately for an open window, but no one moves. To move is to acknowledge this silence that no words can move; to move is to acknowledge that for most of the team, this will be a one-way trip.

Arthur has no illusions about who will be coming back.

He leans his head – uncharacteristic, with how much he struggled with his hair over the years, but then again, everything about this train trip is uncharacteristic – against the glass of the window, and listens to the team’s muted discussion on art, for lack of anything else to talk about. Ariadne approves of Caillebotte’s strong lines; Mal sighs over the tragedy of Rodin and Claudel, of Van Gogh and Gauguin; Cobb, who knows as much of art as Arthur knows of video games, inserts comments of Dali and his rhinoceroses every other sentence.

Eames, of course, defends the virtues of Dali’s elephants while lobbying for Magritte’s clean strokes. “He found his mother after she killed herself,” he is saying, voice haunted and torn. Perhaps he would have known nothing of death had he not stepped into this dream business. He has seen too many people die in front of him. “It destroyed him.”

His eyes meet Arthur’s. In his eyes, Arthur can see that summer day in Paris, the high ceilings of the Louvre, the room dedicated to the Surrealists. He can hear Eames laughing and whispering, “I’ve stolen hundreds of portraits, but, darling, you’re more beautiful than any of them,” and he can still feel that terrible lurch of his heart. Arthur looks away first, but he can still feel Eames’s Glasz gaze searing him. Don’t do this, he tells Eames silently. Don’t make this hurt more than it already does.

Eames is the first to get up to open the window.

When he does, the conversation falters, then stops entirely. Ariadne shifts in her seat, unnerved. Barely twenty, Arthur thinks. She has no right to be on this train, riding to her death. She should be in cafes writing novels or studying architecture.

Eames sits back down, across from Arthur. He leans forward, wrists on his knees. While the others study the floor or the window, he studies Arthur, as though he wants to memorize him forever. As though this is enough to wipe away all his regrets of stepping away, of turning his face away, when they could have done so much more. Been so much more.

It would have been so much easier not to care.

Arthur cannot remember the very first time he met Eames, a betrayal of his memories that disturbs him. But to his relief, he can remember the very first he saw Eames – saw through the bluster and the laughter and the cockiness, saw the lonely man hunched beneath so many heavy personas he no longer knew who he was. “He’s a forger, he’s a liar,” Cobb said, far too loud, and when Eames’s face had crumpled for a single heartbeat, Arthur swallowed his sharp words and said, “At least he doesn’t lie to himself about what he’s scared of losing, Dom.”

Cobb hadn’t spoken to him for a week after that.

Eames did. Not in words, but in sideways glances and silent laughter. It was another language altogether, reading Eames, and one that Arthur struggled to learn. Wanted to learn, much to his surprise. Wanted to know what Eames was saying, thinking. More than that, he wanted to speak back.

Mal leans in close to Arthur. “Tell him,” she whispers. She smells of lavender. “Just tell him.”

Arthur wants to explain that he will. That he wants to. That he doesn’t know how to.

But the train pulls into the station, equal parts terrifying and relieving. At least he doesn’t have to explain to Mal what he cannot put into words. At least he does not have to look at Eames anymore, because looking hurts far more than it should. Oedipus was right in clawing out his own eyes. If Arthur could, he would, to stop seeing what a disaster their lives has become. They are so intertwined in each other that they cannot escape. They will live together or die together, and somehow, the former has not seemed very likely.

There is still so much to do. So much to say, so much to hear, so much to see.

Ariadne stands and fetches her bag. Then she stands awkwardly in Arthur’s corner, trying to keep out of the others’ way. “I wanted to call them,” she says, and it takes Arthur a moment to realize she is talking to him. “My parents. My brother. But I didn’t know what I could say, and it made me feel so tired. I pick up the phone, and then – I can’t do it.”

Arthur pats her roughly on the shoulder. He has never been as good at reassurances as Cobb or Eames. “All of us have something to tell someone else that we can’t,” he says. His words fall weakly in the silence.

God, there is so much space between us, he thinks. How did it get to this?

Eames glances at him, then away. Yes, so much to say. But somehow, it is all their in his eyes. Arthur does not know what is in his, but he thinks that he understands a little bit more now. That it is not in the words, but in something else. Arthur looks at each of his team, and they look back. He sees each of them for who they are. No distance at all. He’s been stupid.

Eames’s touch on the small of his back is feather light and jars him out of the coming revelation. When Arthur looks at him, he nods. It is not the hello of a friend or a goodbye of a lover, but it is somewhere comfortably in between.

Arthur steps onto the platform.


End file.
